


A Friend in Deed

by Woland



Series: The irrationality of reason [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeless Holmes, Hurt/Comfort, Irrational actions, Jealousy, M/M, clueless Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14849894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woland/pseuds/Woland
Summary: Holmes gets jealous. Watson gets angry. Then they both get a revelation.





	A Friend in Deed

**A Friend in Deed**

 

They hobble forward through a swirling blanket of milky-gray fog that rises from the banks of the Thames, coating the rest of the city, thick and suffocating.  It invades the space around them, distorts the shapes of the haphazard huddle of houses piled along the narrow cobblestone that marks the unsteady squelching passage of their soaked feet with wet patches of footprints that disappear almost instantly into the same impenetrable haze. The fog obscures it all – the city in its peacefully ignorant slumber, the wharf that was to be his final destination, the Thames that was to become his grave, (that _would_ have become his grave had it not been for Holmes), the macabre tableau left on the docks behind them – the twisted brushstrokes of flames and gunpowder on a canvas steeped in blood, the angry shouts of their few remaining pursuers.   

 

In this the fog is their ally: it concealed them, allowed them to escape.  And Watson would like nothing more than to believe that they are safe now, that all they have to do is follow the path that Holmes had set them on as they scrambled up the river bank behind the wharf; that they would soon, hopefully, reach Bow Street, where they can finally get the much needed help.  Only he can’t tell one street from another in the sticky milkiness, and Holmes has stopped huffing out directions long ago, sagging heavier and heavier into Watson’s side with each stumbling step.  And Watson’s heart stutters in helpless, gnawing worry as he spares quick fretful glances at his companion’s increasingly pasty complexion, as he listens to the harsh, labored rattle of his breaths.

 

_Hold on_ , he urges him silently, wrapping his arm tighter around the man’s shivering, sodden form, noting with growing despair that his arm has now become the only thing keeping his friend upright. _Hold on._

***

“ _Holmes!” Watson waves at him enthusiastically, beckoning him over the moment Holmes steps over the threshold. “I’d like you to meet a very dear friend of mine, Cecil Hayward.”_

_“A former brother-in-arms, I see,” Holmes notes dryly, brown eyes skimming over the man in his usual all-observant manner._

_“Oh he’s much more than that!” Watson protests, taken slightly aback by an air of almost hostile suspicion he can sense rolling off his flatmate.  “This is a man who saved my life on more than one occasion.”_

_The man in question smiles shyly at the effusive praise, shakes his head.  “Wasn’t quite as heroic as that,” he protests, holding his hand out to Holmes in greeting.  Holmes takes it, courteous as ever, but Watson can see the reluctance in the move._

_“Pffah! I can safely say I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for you,” Watson defends, clapping Hayward on the shoulder with perhaps a bit more fervor than necessary, but Holmes’ strange attitude just puts him on edge.  “Even if all I had to thank you for was preserving my sanity during those endless Afghan nights.”_

_He went a bit too far perhaps with that phrase, revealed a bit too much. Holmes’ face betrays nothing, however, as he quirks an amused eyebrow at him, a careful, blank mask firmly in place._

_“I only just arrived this morning,” Hayward cuts in again, breaking up the tense silence that has filled the suddenly too stuffy room.  “I heard from a mutual acquaintance of ours that John had settled here in London, so I decided to seek him out.  Catch up on old times, as it were.”_

_Holmes’ lips twitch in annoyance, his dark gaze skewering Watson another instant longer before he shifts it to land heavily on Hayward’s hovering form._

_“Your clothes smell of cigar smoke and cheap alcohol,” he begins calmly, dispassionately, head cocked to the side as he examines the man in front of him as one would a bug on display. “You have specific red mud on your shoes and the bottoms of your trousers that puts your most recent whereabouts near Great Wild Street – a location not overly desirable to a gentleman of your caliber, unless you go there with a specific purpose of finding trouble or unsupervised gambling opportunities.  Judging by a stub of a lottery ticket I can see peeking out through a hole in your right coat pocket, I would venture to say it was the latter. Given that the location is quite out of the way of any train station or ship port and quite off  the beaten path for those visiting London for the first time, I would also venture to say that you came there expressly for the purpose of gambling and that you have been there, and by extension, in London, for some time.  Judging by the state of your clothes, I would guess at least a week.”  Holmes takes a step in Hayward’s direction, and the other man shrinks back from him, eyes wide.  “You are a compulsive gambler,” he states flatly.  “A bad one.  You’ve been on a losing streak as of late.  Got yourself in quite a bit of debt.  And one of your creditors recently asked you for their money back.  Seeing how you ran off to London and stayed underground all this time, I’m going to assume that that creditor is someone not only very persistent but also highly dangerous.  Someone, perhaps, of the organized crime caliber.  They have followed you here, gave you an ultimatum.  A memorable one, judging by that poorly disguised bruising around your neck. You promised to make good on your payment, but luck wasn’t on your side.  So you grew desperate and decided to seek out your old war buddy and use his naiveté and his goodwill as–”_

_“Enough!” Watson roars, indignation making his cheeks burn.  “That’s quite enough.” He grasps Holmes’ shoulder none too gently, pushes him back toward the door of his own room.  “I think you should leave.”_

_Holmes flicks his gaze back toward him, the burning intensity of his stare making his eyes appear almost entirely black.  “I’m merely observing and pointing out certain things your_ friend _neglected to share with you, my dear Watson.”  His voice is still perfectly calm, but there’s an undercurrent of danger there, of a barely restrained emotion Watson can’t quite put his finger on._

_“Not all things need to be observed, Holmes,” Watson retorts sharply, his anger fueled by Holmes’ continued, stubborn resistance.  “If you actually_ had _any real friends of your own, you’d know that.”_

_The words fly off his tongue before he has a chance to stop them, and he’s genuinely horrified by what he just said, his mouth stilling in a shocked ‘o’ as he watches Holmes’ reaction, frozen like a man on the edge of a crumbling precipice._

_Holmes flinches as if struck, his eyelids fluttering – brief and faint like the wings of a butterfly, the pallor of his cheeks becoming more pronounced.  Then he nods, taking a small step back toward the door and out of Watson’s reach._

_“Quite right,” he acquiesces quietly, voicelessly almost, and the smile he gives Watson looks like it physically hurts.  “Quite right.”  He nods again, tips his head to Hayward.  “By your leave, gentlemen.” And he’s gone before Watson can come out of his stupor long enough to call him back inside._

***

 

His toe catches on the edge of an unevenly laid stone, his foot slipping on the pavement left slick by the heavy mist hanging in the air and the soggy soles of his own shoes.  It’s a minute slip, to be sure, but it’s enough.  He lists to the right, his own awkward angle and Holmes’ added weight putting a sudden undue strain on his bad leg, and, struggle as he might to remain upright, gravity comes out the victor, landing the two of them in an ungainly heap on the wet, hoofbeaten pavement.

 

The fall is nothing if not brutal, the particularly vicious twist of his injured leg underneath him leaving his body locked in a state of rigid-limbed agony, his nerve endings igniting a firework of sparks behind his tightly clenched eyelids as he lies there, still and breathless under Holmes’ equally unmoving form, waiting to ride out the pain.

 

He isn’t given much of a chance. 

 

Dimly he hears a sharp hiss of a breath above him as the weight on top of him shifts, and he feels the dull pressure of his companion’s arm against his ribs an instant before that weight disappears from his chest altogether, Holmes collapsing onto the cobblestones next to him with a soft moan of pain.

 

“Holmes.” He scrambles up, wincing as the hurried movement echoes sharply in his battered thigh.  “Holmes!”

 

Holmes is on his back beside him, eyes screwed shut in obvious agony that sends rippling shudders through his rigid frame, hitches the all-too-rapid, broken rhythm of his breaths, sets his jaw in a sharp, gritted line.

Their unscripted fall and Holmes’ subsequent move to lessen Watson’s physical burden did the man no favors, and Watson grinds his teeth in renewed worry mixed with a heavy dose of self-recrimination.  Because Holmes shouldn’t be suffering on his account.  Because all of this, this entire disaster of a night, is entirely Watson’s own fault. 

 

There’s a ragged tear in the fabric of Holmes’ pea coat about five fingers below his left collarbone, an ever-growing wet patch around it that differs from the filthy wetness of the Thames that has soaked both their clothes.  There’s a similar though smaller tear on the back of Holmes’ shoulder, he knows.  An entry point for the unerring, merciless path of a bullet, a bullet that was meant for him. 

 

Watson deserved it, too. For being willfully, naively blind to Hayward’s true intentions, the intentions Holmes warned him about in that infuriatingly calm and slightly superior fashion of his that riled Watson so unexpectedly at the time, made him lash out at his friend, viciously, undeservedly.  For letting himself become entrapped as he was, led like a lamb to the slaughter.  For not preventing Holmes from getting shot.

 

***

 

_He stands stiffly on the wharf, looking with a kind of numb detachment at a night-washed splatter of ruthless faces, encircling him and Hayward like an ever-tightening hangman’s noose.  Winces at Hayward’s pathetically remorseful “I’m so terribly sorry, John,” blurted out in the instant before a gun trained on his former companion fires, silencing the man forever._

_He shakes his head at Hayward’s useless words of apology, clamps down on a wave of resentment toward his former friend.  Because there’s no point in being angry anymore.  Because he’s going to die next, right here on those filthy docks through no one’s fault but his own.  And his only regret are the sharp, cruel words he threw at Holmes the last time he saw him and the look on Holmes’ face when he said them.  He regrets not getting a chance to set things right between them, not getting a chance to say goodbye._

_The goons that dragged them here to the wharf had ambushed them at Hayward’s squalid apartment, the apartment Hayward pleaded with him to come to.  There had been no use in arguing, no use in trying to explain that Watson had no association with his friend’s debts, that the apparent stability of his own financial situation (the appearance that Hayward latched on to in the hopes that Watson would somehow be able to cover the enormous debt that threatened his very life, the appearance that led the man to seek Watson out in his desperation) depended to a quite large extent upon the revenue from Holmes’ cases and Punchbowl fights, that Watson was currently, after having paid off his portion of the rent, completely and utterly broke.  The men who had come for Hayward wanted money, and if that money wasn’t there, they were prepared to cover their losses in another way.  Watson was merely collateral damage, for men like that are not in the habit of leaving witnesses._

_An explosion – loud and powerful – rends the quiet night, the resulting blaze spitting forth a hansom-shaped fireball that rolls toward the edge of the docks where they stand, its burning wheels shedding sparks along the way like some infernal machine hell-bent on swallowing them whole.  Watson’s would-be executioners stagger back in startled confusion, firing wildly in the direction of the new threat.  And then Holmes is there, emerging out of that roaring hellfire – unexpected and welcome and terrifying and beautiful, and Watson ceases to breathe as he watches Holmes run toward him, even as gunfire shifts its direction back toward him._

_He doesn’t realize that Holmes had been shot.  Not right away.  Not when Holmes barrels into him, the force of the impact propelling them both off the docks and into the river.  Not when the two of them fumble in the murky blackness of the Thames, Holmes tugging on his arm, pulling him downriver, away from the wharf, from the angry shouts of their would-be killers, tucking them both behind the thick veil of the fog.  Not until the two of them stumble finally out of the water and Watson begins to scramble up the muddy bank only to realize with a start that Holmes isn’t following suit.  Not until he turns to find his friend collapsed on his knees in the filthy sludge, right hand clamped tightly around his left shoulder, swaying feebly from side to side…_  

 

***

 

He shakes the memory away, leans over his friend, gently pulling the top layer of fabric away from the wound to take a closer look.  The wound is bleeding still, albeit sluggishly, Holmes’ formerly white shirt clinging to his body, pressed fast against the skin by a thick, sticky amalgam of water, mud and blood.  Watson’s own shirt is just as filthy and the doctor in him balks at introducing more dirt into the wound, but there’s nothing for it, the wound must be tended, the bleeding stopped.  He was hoping to do it in the safety and relative cleanliness of the police station, but Holmes is ghostly white now, all color gone, and Watson doesn’t think his friend can afford to wait any more.  Swiftly he removes his own drenched jacket and vest, fumbles awkwardly with the buttons of his shirt, his fingers stiff and uncooperative from the cold.  He forgoes the buttons finally, choosing instead to simply rip the material apart as is.  Presses two of the hastily bunched up pieces hard against the entry and exit wounds, murmuring an apologetic, “Forgive me, old boy, I must get this bleeding under control,” when Holmes’ ashen face twists in response to the brutal pressure.

 

Holmes peels his eyes open – a visible, taxing effort.  Blinks sluggishly up at Watson, pain-glazed eyes narrowing in observation.  Draws his own conclusion from the wretched expression on Watson’s face – a twisted mask of fear and self-loathing.

 

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he breathes out, voice hoarse and paper thin.   “After our conversation I was somewhat… distraught… and I… I didn’t act on my suspicions as I should have.  Had I returned to our rooms sooner, I could have–”

 

“Stop!”

 

Watson presses down hard on the stubbornly bleeding wounds, and the momentary flash of surprised confusion on Holmes’ face is instantly whited out by pain.  Dark brown eyes slam shut, the body underneath Watson’s hands flinching sharply, waxen lips pinching to stifle a scream.  And Watson wants to rage at himself, wants to bang his head against the mist-slick bricks until his physical pain reaches the level of his internal anguish.

But a display like that would be counterproductive right now and he bites his tongue on a useless apology.  It seems he’s doomed to hurt his friend today, one way or another, and no words of remorse would ever feel adequate.  So he shifts his hands instead, uses the remainder of his shirt to wrap up the wound, keeping the improvised bandages firmly in place.  Takes care to be gentle this time – a pitiful attempt to atone for his earlier unnecessary roughness.

 

“Stop it,” he repeats, softer this time, placing his hand carefully on the man’s sporadically heaving chest and waiting, breath bated, until Holmes opens his eyes again and looks at him.  “Please.”

 

Holmes watches him silently from beneath a half-veil of water-clumped eyelashes, his gaze searching, questioning, seeking, no doubt, to ascertain the reason behind Watson’s uncharacteristic outburst.

 

“I will not have you blame yourself for my own shortcomings,” Watson insists fervently, obliging the man’s curiosity. “You warned me about Hayward’s motives, and I refused to listen. I–”

 

“He was your friend.”

 

There’s no judgment in Holmes’ voice, no resentment – it’s just an observation, a bland statement of fact.  On the surface, at least, that’s all there is.  But Watson knows him.  Too well.  Has learned to read the complex, puzzling landscape of Holmes’ emotions, concealed from the rest of the world by a well-practiced and seemingly impenetrable mask.  And the faint whisper of sadness underlying Holmes’ words, indistinguishable for anyone who doesn’t know him as intimately as Watson does, rings louder to him than the deep peal of Big Ben. 

 

“So are you,” he protests, his mouth suddenly dry.  Because Holmes is pulling away from him, he can see that.  Protecting himself, locking his shell tighter around himself, locking Watson out.  And Watson can’t let that happen, he cannot!  “Hayward was someone that… he was a relic from my past, and his reappearance in my life in no way excuses how I treated _you_!”

 

Holmes blinks, bloodless lips twisting into a poor semblance of a smirk.  “You were ruled by emotions, my dear Watson,” and there’s no mistaking the rueful tint to his voice this time.  “People do foolish things when emotions are involved.”  He pauses, swallows with visible difficulty, eyelids slipping down another fraction of an inch.  Adds in a quieter voice, sounding almost resigned somehow.  “So I’ve been told.”

 

“Holmes.”  He hears the plea in his own voice, the desperation.  Feels the tremble in his fingers as they curl subconsciously into the folds of Holmes’ shirt – waterlogged and stiff with blood.  “Holmes, please!” 

 

Something flashes in Holmes’ eyes at the supplication – a shadow, dark and troubled – and he looks like he’s about to respond when a distant clamor of agitated voices carries toward them through the fog, and Watson feels the man’s body grow tense underneath his palm.  Slowly Holmes turns his head toward the noise, brow furrowing with concentration as he attempts to discern something in the syrupy grayness. 

 

“Our pursuers seem to have picked up our trail,” he concludes, the urgency of the moment seeming to override his waning energy, his eyes once again sharp with focus.  Huffs mockingly, his expression adopting a hint of his usual haughtiness, “Hardly a credit to their tracking skills, as you and I have marked a path so distinct that even an anosmic hound could follow.  Still…”  He shifts his gaze back to Watson, peers up at him, eyes bright with urgency but carefully, carefully shuttered.  “You need to go now, old boy.”

 

“And leave you behind?” Watson hisses, outrage at the notion making his throat burn.

 

Holmes nods, unperturbed.  “Quickly, too, if you don’t mind.  Preferably, before our new _friends_ get here.” His right arm rises weakly up off the cobblestones, too-too pale, bloodstained hand waving briefly toward a drab lump of a building in the distance before dropping heavily back down to the ground.  “Turn left at that house over there and you’ll– ”

 

“I _do_ mind!” Watson interrupts him heatedly, the mere thought of leaving Holmes alone making him nauseous, the words almost stifled by the bile that rises in his throat.  “I do mind.  And if you think for a moment that I will walk away and leave you here then you’re a bigger fool than I could ever imagine.”

 

Holmes’ gaze narrows, his cheek twitching in annoyance.  “Don’t be daft, Watson,” he spits, voice harsh despite the overwhelming exhaustion lining every word.  “Those people are not so eager to catch up to us just to commiserate with you about the weather.”

 

“All the more reason for you to come with me,” Watson counters, wrapping one hand around Holmes’ uninjured shoulder.  Braces himself on one knee at Holmes’ side as he prepares to pull him upright.

 

Holmes shakes his head, tugging ineffectually at his trapped arm to pull it free of Watson’s grasp.  “It’s no use,” he states with such calm resignation that Watson feels a sudden urge to forgo care and decency and yank the man up by the lapels of his ruined pea coat just to shake some modicum of sense into him. 

 

Holmes reads him, like he always does. Smiles crookedly at the savage intent in Watson’s eyes.  “I have no strength left in me, old cock,” he explains, the weariness in his voice so heavy, so palpable that Watson feels it in his own bones.  “Even if you manage to pull me up, I will but drag you back down again.”

 

“I won’t leave you to die here, Holmes.” Watson’s voice trembles as he speaks, the growing weight of despair pinning him down, turning his limbs to lead and his heart to ice.  Feels the strain on his fingers as they dig harder still into the flesh of Holmes’ arm.  “Not after what you did.  Not… I… I can’t.”

 

Something oddly like regret flickers in Holmes’ eyes, his smile fading into a bitterly wistful half-smirk.  “I can understand how, in light of your similar experience with Mr. Hayward, you would be inclined to feel indebted to me for saving your life,” he ventures, his dark gaze knowing, skewering Watson on the spot.  “Let me put your conscience at ease, dear fellow.”  His voice grows fainter as he speaks, the pale eyelids drooping lower with every strained syllable.  “I confess to you,” he exhales, the labored breaths tickling the back of Watson’s hand, “that my motives for jumping in front of that bullet were entirely selfish.”

 

“Selfish?” Watson echoes distractedly, feeling like he missed something again, something important. 

 

Holmes blinks sluggishly, pulls his gaze up once more – a visible, arduous effort.  And Watson is left breathless by the look of unmistakable pity in the dark brown depths.  _“You see, Watson, but you do not observe,”_ comes unbidden to his mind, and he reels, feels frozen all of a sudden, caught in Holmes’ all-too-knowing stare like a bird in a net.

 

The corners of Holmes’ mouth tick up ruefully, a soft huff of a breath slipping through his nose.  “I did not wish to experience a world without John Watson in it,” he murmurs feebly, and Watson’s heart momentarily stutters to a halt, his lungs constricted with a sudden, acute lack of air as the words linger in the air between them – a solid, damning weight.

 

Holmes watches him a heartbeat longer, a minute twitch of the second hand.  Whatever he sees in Watson’s face, it isn’t what he was hoping for, it seems, and his mouth twitches bitterly, a shadow of anguished disappointment passing over the ashen features.

 

“I do wish you wouldn’t waste the fruits of my selfish endeavor, Doctor,” he admonishes hollowly, letting his eyes drift shut, cutting himself off from Watson as surely as if he had just slammed closed a heavy wooden door between them.  “Our pursuers do not appear inclined to indulge your hesitation.  Leave.”

 

Watson stares down at him, his emotions – a whirring powder keg of stunned confusion, sharp, stomach-clenching fear and a searing, heart-roiling sensation he is genuinely terrified to name.  They bubble up inside him – a volatile concoction reaching critical mass, like one of those highly flammable, explosive mixtures brewing over Holmes’ Bunsen burner.  He, too, feels like he’s about to explode, his heart thudding so violently, so painfully in his chest, he wonders if his ribs might not crack from the brutal pressure.  He wants to cry, to scream, to rage.

 

In the end, he does neither.  Follows instead the simple, unmistakable message in the savage, erratic rhythm of his heart. 

 

He reaches out with trembling hands, cups his friend’s gaunt and frighteningly anemic face with the gentleness and trepidation of one cradling a most rare and delicate of treasures.  And then, before his already daunted nerves fail him completely, he leans in and crashes his suddenly too dry lips over Holmes’ slack, bloodless ones. 

 

It’s sloppy as kisses go, desperate, bruising.  But then Watson isn’t striving for perfection and there really isn’t time for proper kissing etiquette here – not with their quite deadly pursuers hot on their tail, not with Holmes bleeding out on the wet cobblestone too far away from help.  All he wants, all he _needs_ to do is to drive his own urgent point across, to make Holmes understand.

 

Holmes gasps against his mouth, eyes flying open in mute shock.  There’s an uncharacteristically raw openness in the golden-brown gaze, a vulnerability Watson hasn’t really observed before, and he curses himself for being so, _so_ unbelievably blind not to have seen it sooner.

 

“I’m selfish, too,” he clarifies, pulling back just far enough to pant out the words against Holmes’ quivering lips, his hands never relinquishing their frantic hold on the pale, clammy skin.  “I’m selfish, too.  And I do not wish to leave here without you.  Do you understand?”

 

Holmes stares up at him, unblinking, timid childlike hope warring with distrust in the intense, probing gaze. Watson submits to his scrutiny, opens himself up to it, willing Holmes to finally see what it is he’s been looking for all this lost time.

 

“You are a fool,” Holmes whispers finally, shaking his head with an expression of disbelieving wonder that belies his words. 

 

“Aye,” Watson agrees, moving to gently pull Holmes to his feet.  And his heart sings with triumphant joy when Holmes doesn’t resist this time.  Submits to Watson’s manipulations with nothing more than a pained grimace and a bitten lip; leans heavily into Watson’s side as they begin to hobble once more toward the safety of the police station.  “People do foolish things when emotions are involved,” he quotes cheekily, smiling at the strained huff of amusement that elicits from Holmes.  “So I’ve been told.”

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on the response, this may grow into a series of stories (light on plot, heavy on whump, some angst, some drama, some humor, maybe some AUs, definitely lots of adventures). So, please, review and let me know if you liked this story and if you'd like to see more in the same vein.


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